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About the Sunbird Awards

The two Sunbird Award Competitions showcase short narrative and documentary films. All films are either made by Palestinian filmmakers or producers, or they refer to Palestine thematically. The Sunbird Production Award, established in 2017, supports the shoot, post-production, and distribution of one Palestinian short film project, in cooperation with Aarhus Filmworkshop and MAD Solutions. Three international juries announce the winners of the three Sunbird Awards during the festival's closing ceremony.

Why Sunbird?

The name of the award refers to the Palestine Sunbird, a small bird of 8-12cm height. This bird is able to cope with overcrowded urban concrete buildings, in addition to the crawling desert. It has been forced to live in a different environment that the one it was used to live in - green forests.

The Designer

The designer Khaled Jarrar was born in Jenin in 1976 and lives and works in Ramallah, Palestine. Jarrar completed his education in Interior Design at the Palestine Polytechnic University in 1996 and later graduated from the International Academy of Art Palestine with a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts in 2011. The following year, his documentary The Infiltrators (2012) won several accolades at the 9th Annual Dubai International Film Festival.With photographs, videos, installations, films, and performative interventions focused on his native Palestine, multidisciplinary artist Khaled Jarrar explores the sociocultural impact of modern-day power struggles on ordinary citizens. The everyday subjects of Jarrar’s reflective work are contextualised in ways that draw attention to the severity of the issues he examines, giving the political content of his art greater significance while underscoring the autobiographical nature of his chosen themes.